Bogus Nuggets And Bad Coins
When the silver was eliminated from common U.S. coins in 1968, the incentive to use base metals for counterfeiting coins was largely removed. Now, at a time when the market value of gold bullion is depressed, it appears that the incentive to counterfeit has returned, but with a different twist.
Gold mining is only a marginally profitable venture with the price of gold hovering at just above production costs, but large gold nuggets that can be displayed as artifacts of Mother Earth maintain their allure. This situation has apparently given rise to the back-room production of phony Alaska "gold nuggets," presumably by a casting and tumbling process.
Several years ago, Professor Emeritus Robert Forbes (now living in Juneau) utilized the electron microscope at the Geophysical Institute in conjunction with various other analytical methods to unmask several of these counterfeit nuggets.
Fortunately, it appears that the average speculator has little to worry about. The inventiveness of the counterfeiters is likely to be expended only in the production of very large and very expensive specimens.
It is debatable whether this practice can properly be called counterfeiting (although it certainly is an attempt to defraud). Counterfeiting of coins has been around for as long as there have been coins. The frustrated efforts of the early Greek and Roman authorities to stem the practice usually meant a sentence of death or the amputation of the counterfeiter's hands. In the days of the Saxons, Athelstan, King of Wessex from 925 to 935, was a little less severe and ordained that the penalty for forgery should be the loss of only one hand. Under such royal leniency, matters got worse. So in 1125, King Henry I, by some circuitous reasoning, called in almost 100 mint officials to the castle and chopped a hand off each of them.
Perhaps the most promising approach was that used by the Chinese during medieval times. After a long and futile struggle between the government and the counterfeiters, the most skillful of the forgers were rounded up and offered highly paid jobs at the imperial mint. This not only took them out of circulation as counterfeiters, it also placed them in a position to detect and identify the handiwork of their former brethren.
